Which Webmail Providers Mask Client IP Address?

InquiringMind

New Email
There are occasions where I and other people need to make blind inquiries of a company. Circumstances where you do not want to be barraged with sales calls, letters, emails from someone who it turns out you do not want to do business with. Or sometimes you want to join a forum and ask questions about a medical condition that you do not want to be associated with. There are many reasons for privacy, more than I can enumerate well.

In years past I would use fastmail or hushmail or gmx as providers when the occasion would arise. They all blocked your ip address as a matter of policy. Recently a friend asked about webmail providers that block/mask the client's ip address and I discovered that fastmail is no longer free, hushmail now requires a telephone number, gmx is down more than it is up, protonmail requires an existing email first. Is there any webmail provider left that blocks the client ip address and has an easy signup?

TIA
 

InquiringMind

New Email
Thank you for the reply.

I followed the link and went to the webpages for the ones listed.

The signup page eumx.net is just blank.

All of the others listed charge a fee. :(
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
You are correct. I'm checking around and can't easily find a free provider of anonymous email service.

How about this solution?

1) Get your own domain name and pay the fee for a private registration. The total cost should be less than $20/year. I recommend Godaddy for registering domain names.

2) Add an email address within your private domain as an extra "Send Mail As" address in a free Gmail account.

3) Use the Google SMTP servers (not the webmail interface) for sending email.

An alternate to 2&3 could be launching a tiny instance within AWS, installing an easy to use control panel, and allow authenticated smtp relay for your new private email addresses.

One way or the other someone is going to have some billing details about you

Since it sounds like masking your IP is only an occasional requirement, what about getting a domain name, making it private, keep the email hosting with the registrar used to buy the domain, and then driving to the local coffee shop with free wi-fi when you want to send an email and not have your home IP address associated with the email?
 

InquiringMind

New Email
These are very interesting suggestions.

But I wonder if going to these steps, then maybe I should consider setting up my own email server and avoid any interaction with the other services altogether.

Could you recommend a site that has a good primer on what is involved with setting up one's own server?

I think I found a solution for my friend. There are services that let you get one free sms message on the web to test their service. That can be used to signup for the emails that require a phone number. How long those sms to web services will exist is anyone's guess though.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Could you recommend a site that has a good primer on what is involved with setting up one's own server?

Take a look at Life with qmail (that's a Q not a G)

The guide will walk you through setting up your own mail server.

The original problem sounds like what you really need are some email aliases that you can later disable, or throw-away email addresses.

In Gmail I accomplish that using the + feature. myUsername+something@gmail.com

If an address becomes a problem I can create a filter that sends email To: the problem "alias" direct to the Trash folder.
 
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